It’s about 6 months since I went diary- and gluten-free and man, it’s been a long, hard road. I struggled for a while, which is why this blog suffered. In the end, my life revolves around food, with bread and cheese being the staples. I grieved for both.

We like to go native as much as possible whenever we travel, and that includes local breakfast customs. If I had to choose my favourite morning meal option, it would be France with its croissant and a coffee, or a Sicilian breakfast of coffee, a fresh buttery brioche, and granita. What better way to start a day than with ice cream?

Do you love tomatoes? I love tomatoes. I love their texture and their sweet, tangy taste. There’s no better dish in the world than a slice of fresh, homemade sourdough bread with a layer of butter, a thick slice of a sun-ripen tomato, and some sea salt. Take all your fancy food, I’ll just have the toms, thanks.

But what about tomato soup? I do adore a good tomato soup, too. As much as I love cooking though, I don’t like to make things complicated or cook foods that are out of season because they never taste right. I take it from Italians who use canned and jarred tomatoes when they are not in season. So what does a tomato-lover like me do in winter? Well, there are Rebellion tomatoes which are in season in winter. Yes, really. They lack that extra-special sweetness coming from being sun-ripened, but they come pretty close to the summer variety. But there’s also passata which comes in very handy to make soup in winter (and not only then!).

Coconut macaroons (kokosanki) are something that pretty much all Polish people remember as part of their childhood. I hadn’t eaten them for a very long time, until a Polish chef Jakub Kuroń posted a photo of them on his page and I had this sudden irresistible craving for them. It’s the best coconut macaroons recipe I’ve tried and I modified it just a tiny bit.

These little clouds of coconut heaven are very light, fluffy, crumbly and moorish, with just the right balance of sweetness. They are the perfect alternative to meringues when you have some egg whites left from preparing something else.

It’s Real Bread Week, so the timing is just right to tell you how to make a rye sourdough starter. It’s very easy and although the process takes about a week, it will require only a couple of minutes in the morning and evening.

Apple cake is one of the most delicious staples of Polish cuisine. Everyone loves it, or at least I don’t know anyone who doesn’t! Interestingly, apple cake is not something my family would ever make and I only know its glorious taste from patisseries and other, more fortunate people’s homes. I’ve tried out many recipes and the one below is perfection, although I modified the original a bit to balance out the sweetness of dough and tartness of apples.

This is an easy recipe to make a “proper” white bread loaf using poolish as your starter. This will give you a taste of the sourdough loaf-making process, and is the ideal substitute if you can’t/don’t want to use sourdough culture (which we’ll get to soon).
By the way – poolish was invented by Polish bakers (word “Poolish” is Old English for “Polish”) around 1840. You’re welcome.

What’s the dirtiest page in my copy of Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries II? Page 7, because it has the recipe for bacon and celeriac soup, a dish that couldn’t be any more delicious or wintery. I did try to fiddle with the recipe by adding apple and marjoram to the list of ingredients. The apple didn’t change much, although the marjoram complimented the bacon nicely. Alas, I’ve decided to share an unaltered version of this recipe.

I’m going to come clean – I’m not a fan of English desserts. Let’s talk about sticky toffee pudding, shall we? First of all, it’s not English. It’s actually Canadian. The guy who supposedly invented it actually “borrowed” the recipe from a lady who got it off her Canadian friend. So much for its English heritage then.

STP is glorious. It’s in my desserts hall of fame, right up there with Ben’s mum’s Pavlovas, proper tiramisu, my own plum and chocolate tart (recipe here), and crème caramel.